Throwing Rocks & Hauling Dirt

This is a good example of why I should try to always have my camera’s and kit (stabilizing gimbal !!!) with me. We took my wife’s car to the cabin to ride our bikes to lunch and we got back from lunch just as Pro Dirt was backing their conveyor truck in. Very very cool machine that needs video to appreciate. Very uncool shaky video*.

The Video:  ThrowingRock01c

He says that with small rock like this that he’s fairly accurate up to about 100’. Dirt, sand and mulch a bit less accurate. He can also drive his truck around with his remote. Almost like a Tesla 🙂

——-

With the drain tile comfortably snuggled in by rock it’s time to finish with the rough backfill.

Great crew from Scherber doing the excavating.

A little dirt here…

And a lot of dirt here. Lacking a conveyor truck to throw the dirt to the back, they hauled it bucket by bucket by bucket. Back and forth …for two days.

Gently leveling the dirt in the terrace. I’ve been amazed at how accurate they are with the backhoe. Quite fun to watch.

Another bucket of dirt being dumped while compacting dirt in the terrace.

Once filled (and insulation/waterproofing repaired), this will be our porch. The already filled terrace is to the right.

Almost done. The terrace is filled in and now just need to finish filling in the porch and then final rough grading.

These guys must have been Marines. Once they got the pile moved to fill in all the holes, they dug it out again. And made another pile. 🙂 But for a good cause – sewer and water lines.

A drizzly day but the folks from Scherber are still at it. The new hole above and below is for the sewer and water lines.

OK, now we’re done.

With rough backfill done and gravel in the lower level you can kind of see what’s what better. The grey gravel area is the house, the light concrete on the right is the conservatory. West of the house (towards the lake) is the porch, then some wide steps down to the terrace. Along the south and part of the west of the terrace are some planting beds. These keep the drops shallow enough that we don’t have to have a bunch of railings.

Looking east from the conservatory to where the flower gardens will be and trying to get a sense for how much sun this area will get at different times of the day. I think we’re in pretty good shape.

Pre-stressed concrete for the conservatory floor.

*So…, iPhone (vs D850), no gimbal (DJI Osmo II for iPhone or Moza Air for D850) to stabilize it, new editor (Davinci Resolve) that I’ve never used before, and on my little MacBook Pro laptop that is not powerful enough to run it (because my 2010 Mac Pro won’t run it at all). Oh, and then I have to do a bunch more editing to get the file small enough to upload to the blog. 🙂